Summertime

I have not been writing much lately and tonight began to consider why that is. There are actually several reasons. Most are centered around the fact that I have not been conducting my day to day in a manner that I am proud of. I have refrained from broadcasting such lesser points of my behavior but alas I have arrived at a point where I feel I must bear my soul in order to move on. Feel free to skip this post and return when better news is in the headlines (ie Transformers sneak preview coming up).

This summer and the last month in particular have seen me in a inexplicable spell of apathy and laze. My Spanish has hardly improved (I don’t think changing the menu language on my iPod is going to be enough), I have not run even a mile in preparation for an upcoming 10K, and there are still times when Lauren has to help out with housework. I have not done much in the way of yardwork, though the grass has not need cut in over a month. I did do some cleanup but it wasn’t too much. In part I blame the weather (heat mostly) but that’s a cop-out. I have tried to do a few other things around the house, but if you read this blog regularly you know the type of trouble I can get into when attics and insulation are involved.

My time has been taken up by a fury of activities that I engaged in rarely, if ever, in the months leading up to summer. Video Games. I got an Xbox from a friend and FIFA 07 is slightly addictive, shall we say. TV. A number of influences have led to this decline but mostly I have to attribute it to my increased access to DVR and HDTV at various people’s home (mannying, SB, and most recently in CT). In spite of this and the former I think my eyesight is holding up.Soccer. I regularly play pick-up at Georgia Tech at 12:30 (M,W,F,Sat). Here is where my weather excuse fails me, I mean 12:30!!!.Work. This is not a substantial commitment at the moment but I could use the money. I’m continuing my work with the Emory project I had worked with over the semester. No P-trak, just data this time.

And then there are the random things that come with summer: trips to be made (Providence last weekend), baseball games (5 this week for the visiting Sox and Tigers), and trips to the doctors’ offices (3 offices just this week). Mali had an eye infection after boarding and I fell off my bike. I managed to stay out of the emergency room but went to student health services the next day and was told that I had a slight fracture in my radius. I was then sent to an orthopedist/sports medicine clinic and was told that if it was fractured it was not serious enough for cast, etc. and instead they just drained the fluid from the joint and I was on my way. On a lighter note, it was a wholly surreal experience.

So… from this list I can easily see where more time needs to be devoted and which activities can be cut out. However, that’s only half the problem. I feel like my attitude has also changed in the last few months and I haven’t felt too good about some of the way I’ve acted. In general I offer too little respect to others and too much to myself.

One day I killed a snake that I found while cleaning up in the yard. I justified it as preventing a future attack on Mali, but kept thinking about tales of monks who, while digging foundations for buildings, move the worms they encounter to new dirt. I thought also of times I had captured flies in the house using a cup and a piece of paper so they could be set free later and I wondered what had (has) happened.

Later that same day I volunteered to give a man who was going door-to-door a ride to Autozone. I told him I needed 15 mins to do some things and he was gone when I came out. I found out later it was a scam and it was a good thing I had taken the extra time. I rode around the neighborhood for 20 min trying to find him just so I could verbally assault him as a way of releasing my anger, fear and vulnerability.

Today as Lauren graciously picked me up from the game the car behind her honked and I tried to wave them around her. I went on to respond vulgarly to some of the things he yelled at me and I am not proud of that. And all this only hours (4 hours in the constant 95 degree sun [weather is not an excuse]) after we picked up four out-of-towners who were wearing Tiger’s garb and waiting for a bus that I am not sure would have come or taken them to the game.

Forward will I go, as we all must. Patience, humility, forgiveness, and less video games.